The Answer Sheet: death and life of great american school system

Diane Ravitch predicts that the 2010-11 school year will be another year in which "teachers and principals will be blamed and punished" unless their students' test scores go "up and up," more principals will be fired and more schools will be closed. And more.

Education historian Diane Ravitch talks about meeting thousands of teachers and parents who are "unhappy, frustrated and demoralized" at the Obama administration's education policies. And she explains what she would tell President Obama if he gave her the chance.

A hearing held in New York City this week about sounded more like a brawl than the information-gathering session it was intended to be. Read some of the testimony given by education historian Diane Ravitch, which was received by charter advocates as heresy.

There is a story in Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” that policymakers should be forced to read whenever they are imposing yet another school reform plan on a beleaguered school district. It is about school reform implemented so forefully that teachers got sick. Not sick and tired of being told what to do by people who had never been in front of a classroom, but physically ill.